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Riccky Lopes, creator of Facebook sensation Gina Indelicada

It's the internet phenomenon that has everybody talking in Brazil, and yet it was born out of a college dorm room during an informal chat between fellow students. Sound familiar? Yes, I'm talking about Facebook, but not the big idea that came out of Mark Zuckerberg's mind, although the founder of the world's number one social network has a lot to do with it.

I'm talking about Gina Indelicada (which would literally translate as 'Indelicate Gina') a hit Facebook page created about twelve days ago that has already reached over 1.5 million likes, considerably more than some of the country's most notorious public figures (former president Lula da Silva's official fan page has just about 222,000 likes, while supermodel Gisele Bundchen's fan page has 857,000).

So, who is Gina and why is she so popular? Gina is actually a fictional character based on a model who starred in a 1970s ad campaign for a Brazilian brand of toothpicks called Rela Gina. While other toothpick companies used to sell their product wrapped in cellophane paper, Rela Gina's executives thought it was a good idea to place the toothpicks inside of a paper box, so it would be easier to take them to the table. The perfect packaging found, they just needed a face to feature in the boxes. The rest is history, and by giving an identity to the simplest of manufactured things, Rela Gina, or simply Gina, became one of the most well-known products in Brazil, accounting for 40% of the company's total revenue.

But Gina, the toothpick brand, and Gina Indelicada, the Facebook star, aren't related at all. The latter was an idea of Riccky Lopes, a 19-year-old advertising student based in Sao Paulo, who created the page after successfully experimenting in the world of social media marketing. Lopes' first foray into social networking was in 2010, when he launched a Twitter profile that, at one point, was the second most retweeted in the world (the first was Justin Bieber's, number 4 on Forbes’ Social Networking Superstars list). The profile has been deactivated because, as Lopes tells Forbes in a telephone interview Monday, he was "just using it to get familiar with the microblog."

"People think I just happened to discover the internet, but the truth is I've been researching a lot about all of this for quite some time," Lopes says. During that time, he discovered that there's no secret for reaching huge audiences on the internet, something that he achieved more than once in Facebook (besides Gina Indelicada, his other page has roughly 800,000 fans); but only one simple rule that should be followed: interactivity at all times.

"What people really want is to be a part of something, to interact and have their voices heard somehow," he explains. As for the idea of Gina Indelicada, Lopes recounted that he had the concept in mind, but he needed a character to make it happen. "I was making dinner with my roommates, when I opened the fridge and saw a box of Gina toothpicks. We chatted for a while about it, and then it came to me--Gina was the character I was looking for."

The page consists of screenshots of messages sent to Gina by its fans asking questions about anything, which are always answered in a sarcastic, sometimes indelicate way. "Brazilians are known for their friendliness, for their love of hugging and all that, what can sometimes be seen as fake. So whenever a person comes around who breaks that stereotype, people will relate to them as someone who speaks their mind and is sincere. Gina is all of that," says Lopes.

Gina has become something else, particularly for the company to which the character is commercially associated. "We never expected this kind of attention and we certainly don't intend to sue Lopes for it. Instead, we want to partner up with him," says Alfredo Rela Neto, CEO of the company, which is already looking into ways of cashing in on the free publicity, including a portfolio of new products based on Gina. "It's amazing the fact that he's a 19-year-old student and Gina is a 65-year-brand. He's bringing us a totally new consumer audience."

As for Lopes, who claims to have received many job offers in the past few days, he just signed with a new ad agency to coordinate the online campaign of a famous brand of deodorants, whose name he cannot reveal for the moment.

Facebook has become the ultimate tool for companies looking for new ways to connect with customers. As a media channel reaching hundreds of millions of people (46 million in Brazil alone, its second largest market worldwide), it's a matter of survival to be there. "No other advertising channel, at least where you can communicate, can compete with those numbers," says Facebook advertiser Freddie Jansson.

"I think a web campaign for a company is more effective than a television campaign these days," says Lopes. "Facebook presents all the opportunities for those who know how to use it." Lopes admits, though, that the website will probably lose its strong presence eventually. "It has happened before, other social networking websites, like Orkut, became irrelevant. Facebook's time will come, too."

But while it's still hot, Lopes intends to make the most of it. "When I started Gina Indelicada, I expected to reach a million Likes in a month. I've got more than that in just a few days, plus amazing job offers that never occurred me and even business proposals. I think that’s what Facebook gives people and businesses: the chance to reinvent themselves. It's what I did and it is what Rela Gina is doing. And I applaud Zuckerberg for that. He’s a visionary."